मेघदूत: "नीचैर्गच्छत्युपरि च दशा चक्रनेमिक्रमेण"

समर्थ शिष्या अक्का : "स्वामीच्या कृपाप्रसादे हे सर्व नश्वर आहे असे समजले. पण या नश्वरात तमाशा बहुत आहे."

G C Lichtenberg: “It is as if our languages were confounded: when we want a thought, they bring us a word; when we ask for a word, they give us a dash; and when we expect a dash, there comes a piece of bawdy.”

C. P. Cavafy: "I’d rather look at things than speak about them."

Martin Amis: “Gogol is funny, Tolstoy in his merciless clarity is funny, and Dostoyevsky, funnily enough, is very funny indeed; moreover, the final generation of Russian literature, before it was destroyed by Lenin and Stalin, remained emphatically comic — Bunin, Bely, Bulgakov, Zamyatin. The novel is comic because life is comic (until the inevitable tragedy of the fifth act);...”

सदानंद रेगे: "... पण तुकारामाची गाथा ज्या धुंदीनं आजपर्यंत वाचली जात होती ती धुंदी माझ्याकडे नाहीय. ती मला येऊच शकत नाही याचं कारण स्वभावतःच मी नास्तिक आहे."

".. त्यामुळं आपण त्या दारिद्र्याच्या अनुभवापलीकडे जाऊच शकत नाही. तुम्ही जर अलीकडची सगळी पुस्तके पाहिलीत...तर त्यांच्यामध्ये त्याच्याखेरीज दुसरं काही नाहीच आहे. म्हणजे माणसांच्या नात्यानात्यांतील जी सूक्ष्मता आहे ती क्वचित चितारलेली तुम्हाला दिसेल. कारण हा जो अनुभव आहे... आपले जे अनुभव आहेत ते ढोबळ प्रकारचे आहेत....."

Kenneth Goldsmith: "In 1969 the conceptual artist Douglas Huebler wrote, “The world is full of objects, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.”1 I’ve come to embrace Huebler’s ideas, though it might be retooled as “The world is full of texts, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.” It seems an appropriate response to a new condition in writing today: faced with an unprecedented amount of available text, the problem is not needing to write more of it; instead, we must learn to negotiate the vast quantity that exists. How I make my way through this thicket of information—how I manage it, how I parse it, how I organize and distribute it—is what distinguishes my writing from yours."

Tom Wolfe: "The first line of the doctors’ Hippocratic oath is ‘First, do no harm.’ And I think for the writers it would be: ‘First, entertain.’"

विलास सारंग: "… इ. स. 1000 नंतर ज्या प्रकारची संस्कृती रुढ झाली , त्यामध्ये साधारणत्व व विश्वात्मकता हे गुण प्राय: लुप्त झाले...आपली संस्कृती अकाली विश्वात्मक साधारणतेला मुकली आहे."

Friday, July 31, 2009

Never Found in Translation that is Lost in the Neglect of One's Own Heritage

Government of Maharashtra plans to erect 300-feet high statue of Shivaji Maharaj in the Arabian Sea, facing the Marine Drive, in south Mumbai.

Never mind neglect of existing world-class monuments in Mumbai itself: cave temples of Jogeshwari and Mandapeshwar, not to mention sorry state of countless forts and other historical places in Maharashtra.

Read more on this in the essay published by Frontline July 31, 2009 here.

I came across this beautiful line from Thana Gazette (written by a Brit?) in the said essay: “Kanheri is the only rock-cut monastery in western India that has the feeling of having been, and of being ready again to be, a pleasant and popular dwelling place."

...Sir, you may check in because your room is ready...For last hundreds of years!

If we inherit a place like this, shouldn't we be leaving one behind? Isn't that in our contract with our grandchildren?

Remember, the Jogeshwari caves, the Brahminical caves belonging to A.D. 520-550, are the first rock-cut cave temples built by Hindus in the country.

But we are happy chanting: Garv se kaho hum Hindu hai!!! (Say with pride we are Hindus)

When people don't preserve their own glorious heritage, how can we expect them to import great books from other cultures?

Recently on Guardian's website, I found "The top 100 books of all time"
I have not read majority of them but I wondered how many of them have been translated in Marathi.

For someone like me, translation was important because most books from the list, I read first time, were in Marathi. For example, I have read a number of Stefan Zweig's books in Marathi because my father Gopal Dutt Kulkarni गोपाळ दत्त कुलकर्णी had translated them from English.

Translation of great books in a language enriches it. In Marathi, Sane-guruji साने-गुरुजी, who himself translated many books from foreign and other Indian languages, sought such enrichment.

Read a related post that appeared on this blog earlier.

As per my knowledge only following books from the top 100 have been translated in Marathi.

I will be happy to correct this list. ('?????' denotes it probably exists.)

1> Hans Christian Andersen, Denmark, (1805-1875), Fairy Tales and Stories (I have read in Marathi first)

2> Jane Austen, England, (1775-1817), Pride and Prejudice ?????

3> Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Spain, (1547-1616), Don Quixote, (I have read in Marathi first)

4> Anton P Chekhov, Russia, (1860-1904), Selected Stories

5> Charles Dickens, England, (1812-1870), Great Expectations ?????

6> Ernest Hemingway, United States, (1899-1961), The Old Man and the Sea

7> Henrik Ibsen, Norway (1828-1906), A Doll's House

8> Kalidasa, India, (c. 400), The Recognition of Sakuntala, (Read in Marathi)

9> Mahabharata, India, (c 500 BC), (Read in Marathi)

10> Edgar Allan Poe, United States, (1809-1849), The Complete Tales ?????

11-13> William Shakespeare, England, (1564-1616), Hamlet; King Lear; Othello

14> Jonathan Swift, Ireland, (1667-1745), Gulliver's Travels, (Read in Marathi)

15> Thousand and One Nights, India/Iran/Iraq/Egypt, (700-1500) (Read abridged version in Marathi)

16> Valmiki, India, (c 300 BC), Ramayana, (Read in Marathi)

Just 16 out of 100? Not even passing marks!

And for criminal neglect of our heritage as depicted in the picture below? Negative marks!


Seepage and water stagnation at the Jogeshwari caves

(picture courtesy: Frontline, July 31 2009)
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